This is my 189th attempt to begin (or continue) this blog. Nothing comes easily. Adding pictures is still an impossibility. I have literally 10s of thousands of photos (stored in icloud) but I cannot seem to access them. It’s been a most daunting and difficult task! There are all sorts of youtube “how tos” regarding wordpress, but I still cannot access or “implant” my photos. Well, I did find 19 of them. wowsers! Guess I’ll stumble on my way.
Nineteen days before the moving van comes, and our life of nearly 18 years will be uprooted and transplanted to Flagstaff. I look at all we’ve done over these many years and I am overcome with a strange, unnerving hesitation to leave, although there is little here but a very few good friends and way too many memories. Yes, I long for the woods and everything that Flagstaff is and to be in a home where the Mountain is not only visible but very accessible (forest service trail bordering the yard), where the air is clean and invigorating, favorite haunts of old abound, and best of all, being less than half a mile from Eryn and George and the grandboys. But leaving where I’ve been and all the familiarity therein is more than scarry.
The first fireplace fire is crackling away, flames dancing . We’ll have to install a wood stove in Glodia house, because we have never been without wood heat in the entirety of our 35 years together. Something too comforting about such a commodity to be without. First thing we must do, besides getting chicken pen moved and chickens brought up is to somehow eradicate the bulk of horrendous dried weeds in the backyard and erect some sort of temporary fence. And then the settling in begins. I am excited.
Eryn and boys will be absent the week before and after our move….kind of a huge downer, but all part of realizing I cannot depend on Eryn…not for immediate assistance or for her time or for her affirmation. This is going to be all about creating a whole new identity, one devoid, as much as humanly possible, of dependence… and one characterized by internal strength and resilience and creativity…I want to give and to love and not continually be sucking away, trying to satiate my insatiable needs by always dwelling in Eryn’s shadow. This is going to be one huge hurdle for both Gary and me. I am not sleeping because of the pain in IT band so am mostly exhausted every day. Thank heaven for the help given yesterday by Irene and Lena. Thanks to them, the entertainment center is now empty and all my photographs boxed and labelled. House is starting to look empty. Dismantling the courtyard will mean it’s time to go…
May I be internally ready, and physically able to begin this new chapter…
So heavy my heart
the shadow speaks of substance
but there is no sound
If to myself–“God sometimes interferes”–
I said, my faith at once would be struck blind.
I see him all in all, the lifting mind,
Or nowhere in the vacant miles and years.
A love he is that watches and that hears,
Or but a mist fumed up from minds of men,
Whose fear and hope reach out beyond their ken.
George MacDonald
This Place
How timeless the themes
These chasms of changelessness
The unspoken speaks
As the days go by, I hope to post some of my work from the Arizona Highways Women’s Retreat at Vermillion Cliffs in northern Arizona. It was in late October. Although I was not physically up to par, the journey was truly worth the time and effort because the light….oh the light was just indescribable….except through my tripodded lens and the haiku I plan to write for each photo…Why a haiku you may ask? Because each photo evokes for me far more than a mere title could convey and I hope you will be able to take away a little of the visual feast that each day offered.
So this is where it begins….a new dawn, a new year, a new decade!
The first thing I read this new day of this new 2017 was written by George MacDonald (from his Diary of an Old Soul compiled by CS Lewis)
Lord, what I once had done with youthful might
Had I been from the first true to the truth,
Grant me, now old, to do– with better sight.
And humbler heart, if not the brain of youth,
So wilt thou, in thy gentleness and ruth
Lead back thy old soul, by the path of pain,
Round to his best- young eyes and heart and brain.
Musings 